


hanged man's blood

by blueeghost



Category: Black Mirror
Genre: My First Fanfic, Oneshot, Violence, White Christmas, a clapped jeremy heere, basically harry, here's an okay-ish episode destroyed by me, survives, the tenses change a lot sorry ill fix later, this is like the first white christmas fanfic ever so, y'all cowards only writing san junipero
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-01
Updated: 2018-07-01
Packaged: 2019-05-31 20:21:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15127130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueeghost/pseuds/blueeghost
Summary: Au in which Matt sees the warning signs early, and Harry faces death in the silver eyes of a knife and survives.





	hanged man's blood

 

At some point, Harry isn't so sure anymore, the Voice changes its tone from cool encouragement to cautious whispers.

The party feels thick and loud, heavy with the scent of sweat. A hired band plays a jaunty Christmas song from across the bar, but Harry can barely hear it smothered by the oceans of dread he feels in his chest. Several people stumble hard, some dancing like candle flame in the centre of the dim room, and some make idle chat far away from Harry and the woman he has led to a secluded corner. His thin fingers shake so hard he has to stuff them deep into his pocket.

The Voice has gone silent now, and Harry can only imagine the man on the other end: strong and confident - watching the scene with wickedly dark eyes. Harry forces a swallow, and manages a wobbly smile at Jennifer.

Jennifer pats the cushion next to her, inviting him with a quirk of the lips that makes Harry feel like a mouse caught by a snake. Her eyeshadow shimmers and her dark hair feathers around her thin neck. He licks his lips and tentatively seats himself down. There's sliver of distance between them, and Harry wishes for more alcohol or the Voice to return or a chasm to split the earth between them. Jennifer opts instead to break the static and lean in.

Her voice is barely a whisper. "All your talk... about moving on from the office job, doing something with my life. I think - I think I get it. I can show you. How to get rid of them." She stutters and pauses carefully like she's baring her soul open.

"At yours?" Harry asks, surprised at the clarity of his voice as she leans against him more firmly, pupils blown wide. She's small, but he inexplicable feels smaller.

"Yeah, sure," she says, rushed and breathless. The party is chaos around them but silence is all Harry can hear past the thrumming in his stomach.

" _Good. You're doing well_ ," the Voice says, low and gravelly. It's so sudden and invasive that Harry jerks his head away. Jennifer frowns.

"We can fix ourselves, Harry," she pauses, eyes searching him, rims catching amber light on a dark net of veins. From galaxies away the party reaches a crescendo, people cheering and clapping as the band swells and melds into another pop song.

The Voice huffs quietly. Harry can hear vestigial noises if he really focuses - an ambulance driving by, a lone car engine roaring against concrete. The bar melts away until it's only him and the sharp scent of the chemicals in her perfume. She stands, pressing right up against his arm. She hasn't drunk anything, but Harry feels he might need to.

"Wait! I'm not -" he cuts himself short. She rises, unsteady, looking down at him with soft eyes that send fingers of dread down his bones.

"Okay," he whispers, feeling distinctly like he's just sold his soul. "Okay."

She clatters, unsteadily, parting through waves of party goers and alcohol in steps that remind Harry of a whirlpool tide. He can only shuffle after her wake. Her hair catches light like a halo on a crown of dark feathers, and Harry's stomach flips in fear as she looks at him with molten gold eyes that see straight through his skull.

Outside the pub, it's dark and oppressive and cold. Harry barely suppresses a shiver at the sight of his breath unfurling before him.

"I live close by," Jennifer turns to him with an adder's smile. Sodium streetlights cut sharp panels of darkness across her face. The sky looked bruised. Harry wrapped his arms around himself. "We could walk?"

He nods, a slight tilt of his head. The Voice was gone, he noted from a million miles away on desolate moons.

"Help," he hisses quietly, trudging along after the confident slither of the woman. She glanced behind her often, making sure he was following with chasm eyes that he couldn't see.

" _Hm? Yes, you're doing great_." The Voice makes him jolt for a second time that evening - morning. It trails of and Harry can feel the palpitations of paranoia beneath it. "Keep going. Don't do anything that will... excite the situation, okay? I'm going to be silent for a while."

Harry nods at nothing, not knowing if they can see him, knowing Jennifer then glares back at him.

The walk might as well have been through the Antarctic mountains. It's a long fifteen minutes of silence and jostling shoulders with the only woman who's given Harry a look of something other than sneering contempt. Some car alarm shrieks in the night as Jennifer fiddles with the lock of her apartment. The space here, in front of her ordinarily plain apartment, is a vacuum of silence. Beyond, the city still thrums and pulses with starlight and cars, because there isn't a city in existence that sleeps.

Here, Harry feels starkly alone. Nobody is outside apart from him and Jennifer, all the lights are off in the houses around, and the cars have a layer of frost on their empty, shiny shells. His legs are stiff and fingers unresponsive as the cold seeps into his bones.

Inside he's met with a welcome blast of warmth. He can here faint shuffling sounds, and can't tell if that's from the Voice or not. Her apartment is big and small at the same time, because she has it chock full of random objects. There are a jungle of potted plants, stuffed birds and insects and butterflies and even a snarling taxidermy dog. The sofa is a rich mauve, and that's where Harry assumes she'll go, until she turns into the kitchen.

He stands around, swaying, unsure of what to do. He sits on the sofa.

" _I don't want to alarm you_ ," the Voice whispers carefully. " _Actually, never mind. Just... stay calm, alright_?"

"What?" He asks out loud. Jennifer returns with two shot glasses in her hands. Harry can just about see past the doorframe. There's a knife missing from the knife block on top of the counter.

 _Stay calm_. He breathes out through his nose, relieving tension down to his feet.

"I don't want alcohol, thank you." He says.

"Oh, I insist. It's excellent. Chardonnay." She extends a cup towards him.

His mouth splits into a wobbly smile. "I'm sure it is." He sinks further down into the scratchy headrest. For a split second her face darkens.

"Alright." She sheds her coat like a lizard shedding skin, and takes his hands with her perfect nails and supple skin. He stands, hunched in on himself. She gives him a sad look.

"Look at us, Harry. At the mercy of _Them_." She shakes her head, hair fluttering around her. "This ends tonight."

"What - ?"

"Shh. It's okay. Come with me."

She leads him into her room, a dim space of dark watercolour and the smell of antiseptic. Harry feels adrenaline rush through his body, up into his arms. She pushes herself against him. His ankles hit the bed, and he goes down, hard. He sits up quickly, unsure, looking up at her with wide eyes.

"I'm not sure I want this," he affirms.

"It's okay," she repeats, a hand sliding from his thigh to grip his shoulder.

Everything after is silent, like the air is pulled taut until it is a razor's edge, until it gleams and stretches across their throats. There's nothing sexually charged with the way she's looking at him, the way she leans in with unnatural stillness. At this point Harry feels pressure from the original agreement from the Voice to stay, and the blaring warning signs from his brain that scream and scream until he slumps into her.

"I can help you," she whispers, her face grave. She reaches for something behind her, something shiny. "We. We can stop this. We can put an end to the reign. We're together in this, you and me."

" _Leave,_ now." The Voice is there again, sudden and abrasive and with enough panic to send Harry hurtling upwards. She's stronger than she looks, pinning him down with a flex of muscle. She downs the entire shot glass - where did she get it from? - and a trickle of sharp smelling viscous fluid runs down her face. She looks wild, unhinged, like the winter wind outside, like the hand she has raised in front of him, and the swing she makes with it. Her face is dark, dark, swimming above him, shapes and colours and confusion eddies in his hollow brain.

She lunges.

Harry whimpers, a soft exhale that would've been a word, a plea, as something - her hand, her hand, the shiny thing - punches his stomach, _into_ his stomach.

Harry looks down, past the blur in his eyes.

There's a knife buried in his gut.

It stays in.

He opens his mouth to scream, but finds that he can't. His hands shoot to his stomach, coming away slick with red droplets that slide down, pool into the crevices behind him, sends him falling down onto the bed. His head pounds, heart escalating and thumping so widely Harry thinks it will rupture. There's the sensation that his belly is falling out, all his intestines and organs coming undone, and he raises his panicked, half blind eyes to the woman looming over him.

The world coughs, distorts, splutters as he kicks out with his legs, feebly, meeting open air and dimness and quiet and the roaring of blood.

She gurgles, the acrid scent of metal tang hangs heavy in the air. Blood leaks down from her jaw, oh god,

 _oh god_. He's going to die. He's going to die.

"I don't want to die," he gasps out, voice feeble and cracked. He feels like a child, begging for his mother. Time passes: how long? How long? The blanket bunches beneath him.

"For freedom," she says, wetly. Harry manages to haul himself backward, wriggling as uselessly as a worm as colour fades from his eyes, as fire burns the corner of his vision, as his hands grapple with the knife still inside, still wedged in his viscera.

He slips in an out of consciousness. He's one of those stuffed insects on her mantle. Weird lights dance around him. He can hear gasping, screaming, arguing, a door scratching on its hinges. He opens his eyes again to find that nothing has changed, that Jennifer's now on the floor, blood around her, around him, that a second ago the grim reaper walked in with human skin.

He closes his eyes again. Opens them, a fish gasping for air, a taxidermy replica of an animal without its skin. His gut is still slipping out like a gushing faucet, around the knife wound, out, waterfall. He groans, shifts. Consciousness floods back like a dam and red cold water.

He begins the slow crawl upwards in the bed, away from the stagnant blood pool, dead flies, and glances over to see someone standing over Jennifer, shrouded in darkness. She's unmoving on the floor, blood openly flowing from her head - her mouth. He doesn't care.

He collapses again, limbs going leaden, hands sliding from his tummy.

A gentle hand brushes his hair back. Sweat sticks to it. It's warm, terribly warm, and cold, and electric. Arms heft him up. He is boneless. He sees himself from space, floating, ethereal, bleach in his nose. _Is this Heaven? Is this Hell?_

His face is pressed into someone's shirt, a hand grips him firmly. He thinks he might be dead now, and finally gives in when a blast of cold air hits him, and he sees space again, and stars, and himself pressing into the warmth of the Voice hushing him. Someone is carrying him, something is moving beneath him, he -

 

* * *

 

 

When he wakes up, he is met with medical whiteness and a pain so great he imagines himself screaming. He falls.

He wakes up again, eyes wide _. How long has it been? Is heaven meant to be this painful?_ He is dimly aware that he is moving. Bandages wrapped around him. He thinks, desperately, that he's in a cocoon. His ears are stuffed with cotton. His mouth is sandpaper.

He takes in light. He is luggage in the back of a car. In the rear-view he sees the reflection of a man, and their voice swims into his ears.

It's _the_ Voice, on the phone. He struggles to keep his eyes open with the revelation of it.

Harry falls into fevered blood dreams and empty minds for the last time. The next time he wakes, he is alive. The next time he wakes, the Voice on the other side has parked his car on the side of a country road, and Harry is sick with the clarity of it all.

 

**Author's Note:**

> idk why i wrote this like literally white christmas isn't even in my top five of black mirror episodes¿. i feel like they crammed three episodes into one hour, n they were trying too hard to make u sympathise with joe even tho he's an abusive child murdering btch like??? yeah, abuse of technology is bad, but the amount of people i saw saying it was his ex wife(?)'s fault is.... woah  
> this came from an idea me n my friend had. i watched white christmas three times and then changed everything about the dialogue and plot ur welcome ;)  
> this is..... the most obscure thing ive ever written, obscure enough to become it's own thing if i'm bothered. sometimes i think "why am i doing this," and then remember that fic where tsukiyama gets f*cked by a trolley and yknow what i feel better.
> 
> i don't think ill continue this/ ?


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